Evan Frederic Morgan, Lord Tredegar

                       Eccentric, toff, poet and homosexual, the unique fairy Prince of modern times!

Lord Tredegar’s biographer, William Cross, announces a new book on Evan Frederic Morgan, the “ fairy prince of modern times”.

Evan Morgan’s biographer William Cross, author/ co-author  of  five books featuring the life and times of Evan Frederic Morgan, (1893-1949),  the last Viscount Tredegar, offers an insight into Evan’s letters and prose in a first ever compilation of Evan’s surviving written works.

Drawing on Evan’s letters in the Tredegar Archive and  the British Library  this tribute also combines  a broad base of material from  Archives, Magazines, Newspapers, Anthologies and from the results of  Cross’s ten years of research. The compilation will fill a gap as very little of Evan’s best ( or indeed worst)  verse and virtually none of  his letters are published apart from in William Cross’ books [ NB“ Not Behind Lace Curtains: The Hidden World of Evan, Viscount Tredegar ( ISBN 978-1905914210 ) and Evan Frederic Morgan: The Final Affairs : Carnal and Financial (ISBN 978-1905914241) have a small number of Evan’s letters and poems.]

The  new book  from William Cross is entitled " Evan, Lord Tredegar, Selected Letters, Prose and Quotations : The Mystic Muse of Evan Frederic Morgan” ( ISBN 978-1905914333).

The work should be available for Evan’s next birthday on 13 July 2015.

The book will also contain many dozens of quotations from and about Evan Frederic Morgan, Lord Tredegar,  a true "one-off", 

Contact William Cross for the latest information about the new book.

williecross@virginmedia.com

NOW AVAILABLE  £8.00 plus p&p.

UK p & p  £3.00

Europe   p& p £5.00

Outside Europe p & p £7.50

CONTACT ADDRESS IS 

58 Sutton Road, Newport, Gwent, NP 19 7JF   UK

NB  An anthology of Evan's further letters and prose will be considered in 2016.

The publication of Evan's books of poetry is also under consideration.


 

 

The Clangorous Way of Evan Frederic Morgan

               A Review of City of Canals

             by William Cross, FSA Scot

 

This is a stronger body of poetry from Evan Morgan than any of of his other earlier volumes. A foreword by Evan himself maps his own development ( as he sees it ) as a poet, with the core of the influence over this compilation being the Elizabethans ( whom Evan says he studied) and the Roman Catholic Church ( with whom Evan flirted in the 1920s). Evan declares being " now passed the stage of Swinburne worship, the romanticism of Keats, the philosophy of Shelley, the clangorous ways of Byronic harmonies, the resounding  symthonies of Browning, the organ tones of Tennyson."

We also learn much of Evan's pilgrimages abroad - over three years - to Italy, the Holy Land and North Africa, indeed as many of the 30 odd poems have a place and time written at their end, it's possible to glean something of Evan's extensive travels in this period of his life when he was a bit of a wanderer, unsettled in his life, waiting to inherit more the Kingdom of Tredegar, with it's vast estate, than the Kingdom of God. The centre piece The City of Canals is of course from Venice in 1926, but it might as well be Oxford or Birmingham, since the 38 stanzas actually disquise someone Evan was besotted with at the time. This is the real subject of the poem. But its passing reference to " Vulgarians the Grand Canal" keep us under water, in Venice, and Evan in love with images without any doubt - and he draws on metaphors galore to stimulate us and makes comparisons with " Volumptuous Venus and dark-flushing Mars" and drools over the palaces, pillared balconies, dirty gondolas and the rippling water. Also from 1926 are poems like     " Love in Absence" ( written in Riva, the St Tropez of Dalmatia) and " Had I Forgotten you! "( written in August 1926 at Lago di Garda ( Lake Garda) ). 1927 sees Evan in retreat writing his heart out in a piece about a poet and a riddle whilst in the Villa Mauresgur Cap Ferrat. Two years later another Villa - of Gregorini, at Bologna and another poem, of love " Some would suppose we were put here to love- and loving be loved back, to love again." and he wishes for " mutual love, fit for Love's ecstasy". Cities do influence Evan's poems - two written about Paris ( from 1926 )are lyrical - one is a song. Rome gets a mention here and there    " Recumbent, martyred in Sleep's catacomb...". In between Evan makes for the dreary English seasides where he could breathe better - his lungs were mercilessly diseased. Evidence from my copy of the book links Evan with a band of Benedictine brothers at Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire, where he retreated and wrote more of his poetry, whilst studying his fellows at close quarters and in his clumsy,clangorous way dreamt of finding love and receiving their praises.